Mahatma Gandhi was shot down on this day in 1948 by Nathu Ram Godse. Every history book credits him for standing against aparthied, for getting India her independence, for propagating the path of truth and honesty and preaching non-violence. Mahatma Gandhi, in his 72 years of life did more for his country than anyone else could ever do in 7 lifetimes. Now these are strong words that I am using. And I will have to defend them.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi could have taken the path trodden by everyone else and could have been a meek spectator to the Indian freedom struggle. He was after all a qualified lawyer and he could practise law at London or at South Africa. But he chose a different stance. When he was kicked out of a railway carriage, he could have cursed the Brit and sat in the third class compartment but he stood his ground. There are numerous incidences like that.

In short, he had this ability to stand for what he thought was correct. Most of us admire him for this very reason. Even when odds were against him, he would make sure he stood his ground. For me, the best thing about Mahatma Gandhi was his ability to connect with the masses when newspapers were limited in reach, television was a privilege and Internet was not even born. His messages and letters could bring the entire nation to its feet. Managers in this era should learn from his methods and way he influenced people. And this influence was not a particular section of people but on everyone. Hindus, Muslim, Educated, Villagers, Men, Kids .. think about a strata and he had reached them.

Many people have blamed him for partition of India and Pakistan. He is also blamed for all the problems we have between Hindus and Muslims. He is known as a bad father. His relationship with his son Haribhai are still as big as a folklore. But all things said an done, he was after all one of the key reason we got our independence. His contribution was no small one and he will always be missed.

For me, he is one of those few people who died too soon. His death anniversary is a time to take stock of the situation. What we could have been and what we are now. And finally the way ahead for future.

I have wanted to join theatre for quite some time. I entered a query on Google and was directed to homepage of Mumbai Theatre Guide. And right on the top was this ad from Google Adsesne.

The copy read

Watch the hot pics of Indian Women in the world on IBNLive.com Now!

Is the biggest and the best media house in India trying to sell it website by paddling pictures of Indian Women?

Imagine. IBNLive.com is the internet presence of IBN7 – part of TV18 group and a news channel that goes with the punch line "Khabar har kimat par". I used to think TV18 is an awesome company. I am in awe of Rajdeep Sardesai and Raghav Bhal. I know competition on internet is huge but these small cheap tricks to get more visitors on a website will not take them very far. Are they winning medals for journalism by showing hot pics of Indian Women? Are they creating personal fortunes and big companies by selling soft porn?

Coming on to the other side of the issue, do these women know that their pics are being advertised? That their personal lives are being used by IBN to promote their website? If they don't, isn't this breach of their personal privacy? If they do know, doesn’t this amount to crime? Paddling soft porn? Ms. Sushma Swaraj are you listening/reading?

Can someone forward this to TV18 group? And specifically to Mr. Bhal and Mr. Sardesai?

This bus also did not stop. Third bus in as many hours. AJ can't quite figure out this indifference on part of bus drivers. He is standing in sun, at a crossing in middle of nowhere, trying to wave down that hourly bus that can take him to the next town. Next hint of civilization.

He thinks that world has always been unfair to him. Parents, relatives, friends, teachers, neighbours, even strangers. He left his home in morning. For a journey. A never-ending journey. In pursuit of happiness. Happiness that has always eluded him. A journey to help him discover why world has been so unfair to him. Even the bus drivers seem to be unfair.

He was an average guy by all standards. Average looks. Average brains. Average in everything he ever did. Yet he thought that people hated him because of something that he had. Or maybe something he did not. He knew something was wrong somewhere.

He had only one wish. He wanted to see someone being honest to him. Someone thinking about him. He had decided that moment someone is fair to him, he would stop start looking at the world in a new light. He would ignore previous shortcomings.

He was looking for that one faint glimmer. One small signal that god actually exists. That he can trust people. That people are not out there to get him. That he is average. Very average.

Now, on the horizon, he can see yet another bus. Another ray of hope that he knows will fade away. Another bout of depression coming his way. He has long given up on things. Things like a bus stopping and he boarding it. Ever. He decides to sit and let the bus go.

And, the honking, rickety bus stops.

Note: This is my first attempt at FlashFiction. In short, a fiction in less than or equal to 300 words.

I was reading The Man Who Knew Infinity and I came across this interesting line on the status of education system devised by British when they were ruling India.

It was designed, after all, to churn out bright, well-rounded young men who could help their British masters run the country, not the “restless and ambitious spirits”

Think more on it and you would realize the perils of Indian education system.

Like a lot of other things, we have inherited the education system from the British. They enforced a school, college and university system of education on masses of India.

Indian society always had manpower in abundance. Jobs were hard to find. Money rested with a fraction of a fraction of people. For a commoner, education and degree was the fastest way to economic freedom and stability. People made sure they get that coveted degree and get a stable job. A degree became something revered.

Perhaps, no where in the world you have university examinations where you are made to read Psychology, English, History, Geography and others, if you want to become a computer programmer. There are umpteen more examples like that. All the courses are made mandatory and you have to take them in order to get a university degree. You can not choose, mix and match these courses. You cannot decide what you want t o do in life. You have to live is the way others thing you should.

If we had something called the credit system where you could pick courses that you want to read, India would have lot more evolved people (for example schooling and college in USA). With Indian system, the entire focus of students and teachers and parents is on getting maximum grades. It is very likely that a student crams a text book and tops the examination and gets all the accolades. He might not even know how to reach his home from a remote corner of the country. And, on the other hand, a truly smart student has to bear the brunt of not performing in these text-book examinations. He might be the next Ambani, Bose, Gates or Jobs but he will be discouraged to take the road less travelled.

I used to be an academic topper till about 10th standard. I really believed in and wanted to excel at examinations. I would do everything from cramming text books to fill water bottles for teachers to make notes to cheat and to everything imaginable to get good marks in exams. And it was not only me. All my friends and their friends and their friends wanted to excel. By hook or by crook. If i came second, parents would not congratulate me. They would ask why I wasn’t first. If I got 97, they asked me what happened to other three marks.

This made my knowledge and understanding of the world bookish. I would always go by the book and would never think of an alternate way to do things. My creativity was constrained in a box. Every time I thought of a novel way of doing things, I was stopped by teachers. I was told to adhere to what teacher thinks is the best solution. I could not innovate or improvise. We should take cues from other education systems that are more hands on. Where students are required to innovate and improvise if they have to get grades.

Coming back to the text, this kind of a bookish education is good for developing people who can serve. This system would produce copy-cats. Not innovators. Followers. Not Leaders.

Someone has to change the education system. The onus can come from the industry. Currently if you are to recruit someone, you look for credentials in terms of education and pedigree of the institution. If you start recruiting someone who is good with logic and has no formal degree and encourage that, a lot of fresh ideas can be brewed. Except for my employer, I have never come across a company that prides itself in hiring dropouts. In fact in my case, for recruiting me, they made an exception. They hired me even though I am a MBA from one of the best institutes in the country and had never flunked or dropped out.

With more and more people taking the alternate route now, I am very hopeful that we would break away from the mandatory courses and llot less lives would be wasted because of our education system.

I have been reading both Dilbert and XKCD for quite some time now. Here is my answer.

Here is an answer from a die-hard Dilbert and a devout XKCD fan. Dont really follow Explosm.

I think the answer lies in the way you measure popularity.

A lot of people might not go to the websites to read the comics. They subscribe with feed readers and emails. Further Dilbert is syndicated on comics.com and host of other publications. Reach for Dilbert is thus huge without a lot of people logging on to Dilbert.com.

Further, Both comics are for different people.

Most MBAs (including me) can relate to what Dilbert says. Most MBAs are also working in managerial roles and a diverse range of companies. May be they are short of time to logon to the website? I am not implying that managers work ;)

XKCD is about geekdom and its difficult for anyone non-geek to understand what is going on. Geeks love to spend time on the internet and hence more clicks. And geeks are more likely to have all kinds of tool bars (read Alexa) installed on their comps.

In recent years, trend has been moving towards non-conventional careers and more and more people are opting for self-employment and entrepreneurship rather than a MBA. And maybe this is a reason for growing popularity of XKCD?

Adage.com has this interesting article about Publicis and Google. According to adage, Google and Publicis have agreed on talent sharing to design and develop new product and services. Talent sharing has been done in the past as well but there is more to this sharing than any other partnership.

In an interview to adage.com, Publicis CEO Mr. Levy said 1. "For a few months or a year, people from Publicis Groupe will be working at Google, and people from Google will be working at some of our companies" 2. "We're bringing Google our knowledge of advertising communications, consumers and client needs. They're bringing us knowledge of technology and the world of the web." 3. "Google might develop partnerships with other agencies, and Publicis is free to work with other groups, such as Yahoo or MSN."

Publicis is into advertising and communication and Google is in technology and web. How can these two companies benefit from talking to each other?

If you look deeper into the core businesses, Publicis is effectively into communication of benefits of existing brands and still deeper, creating the need for a new brand. Google on the other hand is in the business of providing information to users and enabling transactions between users and brands.

If Publicis was to get into a relted business, they would logically get into Google's domain and if Google integrated backwards, it would go into Publicis' territory.

More and more companies are willing to share information to design new products. Interesting times ahead.

The survey about locations of users is important. It shows the readiness towards e-commerce in India and where a location specific service (local search, order aggregation, ) might work. More on this later.

There is something even more interesting. The number of tickets that leading OTAs book per day. MakeMyTrip.com books 8000 tickets a day. ClearTrip.com books 6000 tickets a day. This number has been reported by the company themselves. There is no reason to doubt the accuracy. After all they are not like social networking websites where the number of members is the only way to evaluate these companies.

Going by these numbers, Cleartrip.com books approximately 22 lakh tickets per year. I assume this number to be correct (don't know if these many people fly in India per year) and going by earlier post on Cleartip.com earnings, average billing per ticket is 3200 bucks.

And again assuming that they get between 1% and 5% of the ticket as commission, they make anywhere between 50 and 250 bucks per ticket. This is a big range but without data, this is the best number.

It is not about introducing the thinnest laptop or fastest or latest. These things are trivial. It is about pushing the limits everytime you face challenge or an audience. It is about creating expectations and then living upto them.

And as they say, presentation is as important as the final product, in my humble opinion, no one can deliver better presentations than Steve Jobs. We should learn how to create hype around a product and make them cult.

I would be honest. I would not say that I follow Hockey and I cant name all 11 players that make up the Team India. Last I followed Hockey was when Dhanraj Pillai was the captain and Ashish Balal was the goalie. Apart from Viren, I remember names like Prabhjot Singh and GaganAjit Singh.

So, Viren is leaving hockey to pursue management education. I am sure it would have been a very tough decision. One side is representing country in Olympics, five minutes of fame, life time of memories and intermittent money. The other side is secure post-MBA career with a big corporate, money and ownership of businesses and power it brings.

The entire country is up in the arms because someone abused a cricket bowler and I don't know how many these "true" Indians would even know Viren Rasquinha's name. The bowler got prime airtime on even regional channels and Viren's retirement did not even make it to the front page of a national daily.

I have done my MBA (arguably from the best NON-IIM institute in India) and I can vouch for the poor quality of education. The management education imparted in business schools in India does not take you anywhere. BSchools are nothing but glorified placement agencies. They dont make you leaders. They prepare you to be a part of the herd. The herd that does not know where is it going. I am not sure about Viren's decision to leave but as they say "to each his own".

Anyways, can continue to rant on this forever but fact of the matter is that India has lost yet another athlete to money. All the best to Viren for his career ahead and may be could teach a few "managers" a lesson or two.

I think its not technology at the core, rather as we move to open standards and free availability of source codes, technology would become more of an enabler (or means) rather than being at the core.

Yes, I agree that people with deep pockets do put tons of money behind these ideas and algorithms and it is very difficult for a small player to complete with them.

And you hit the nail on the head when you said that Indian companies don't have the mind-set to compete with offerings that are purely tech led.

Finally, talking about local search, online classifieds etc, I think they have a long way to go before they truly become effective. Currently the users that they have are mostly biased and same users are creating content everyone on the web. It will be effective when Internet becomes mass and people participate rather than just read.

I have got calls from at least 4 people asking about Reliance Power IPO. What is different about these calls is that all these 4 people have nothing to do with financial markets and they have been lured by easy money to be made with Reliance Power IPO

There might be many more people like that. Assuming that they are as new to the stock markets as my friends, here is a fast fact guide about IPOs for absolute novices.

IPO refers to Initial Public Offer. In simple terms it means that the company issuing the IPO needs some money for a specific purpose and they are approaching the public to buy shares and give money. For example if Cafe Coffee Day wanted to expand from 500 cafes to 1000 cafes and they needed money for expansion, they could either take a loan or issue an IPO. The objective of IPO would be to raise money to buy stores at premium locations and open new cafes. AND NO CAFE COFFEE DAY IS NOT COMING OUT WITH AN IPO. IT IS JUST AN EXAMPLE.

Investor categories. There are different types of investors. HNI - High Networth Individuals, FII - Foreign Institutional Investors. Most of the individuals investing their hard earned money would fall under the category of Retail Investors. A retail investor can not invest more than 1 lakh in an IPO.

Demat account: Account for trading shares in dematerialized form. You need to have a demat account to trade in any kind of securities. Demat account with any broker with do. It could be an online trading account or an offline one.

Subscription: Simply put, this is the number times the shares of the company were applied. For example if RPL had 1000 shares in all to offer, and 10,000 people applied, the IPO would be over-subscribed by 10 times. In this case, RPL is offering 260 million shares. If only 260 mn shares are applied for, the IPO would be fully subscribed. If people collectively apply for 520 mn shares, it would be oversubscribed twice. So on and so forth.

Partial Payment: Simply put that for applying to the IPO, you dont have to put 1 lakh (assuming that you are a retail investor). You have to put just 25% or 25000 to apply for shares worth 1,00,000.

Listing Date and Price. Once these applications are made, the company would allot shares in proportion to number of applications. There is a complex formula but for fast facts, lets assume that it is oversubscribed 10 times. Each investor would thus be allotted 100/10% (or 10%) of shares applied for. If you applied for 100 shares, you would get 5 shares if the IPO is over-subscribed by 20 times.

After allocation, these shares would be listed on stock exchanges. Listing simply means that the shares are now available to trade on exchanges. People can buy and sell them in a typical barter manner.

Issue Managers. This is simply the set of bankers that manage the issue. They have nothing to do with allocation, subscription, pricing, buying, selling from a retail investors perspective. They just manage the entire process and in return get a fat fee. Dont be swayed by calls that say that they are the managers and you can only invest if you have a demat account with them.

And in the end, please think hard and consult someone who knows the markets before you invest your hard earned money.

It’s been more than 25 years now that I have been living. I have nothing to show for my achievements. It’s not because I aint got no brains that I have not achieved anything so far. It’s the pursuit of greatness in every small thing that has prevented me from that very greatness.

I want to be good at too many things at the same time and I end up as average in all of them.

Probably a way forward could be division of time in the ratio 80: 20. I shall spend 80% of my time on one thing and the other 20% on things that are not important.

I have to decide what this chunk would be. Currently I want to do programming, design, entrepreneurship, stocks, photography, web, travel, writing, communications projects, advertisements, the list is endless.

I have been telling people that I want to meet other great people. Spend time with them and learn from them. I can relate to what Newton said about giants and their shoulders. I want to learn from other people who actually think and get into the habit of thinking on things. Right now we don’t think. We think that we think but in reality we don’t really think. We are reacting to things around us.

Bharat Ratna is the highest civilian award conferred by the Republic of India.

One fine day Mr. LK Advani thought he needs to do something for former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. In his opinion best thing to was recommend Mr. Vajpayee’s name for Bharat Ratna. He wrote a letter to Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh making his opinion known.

Taking a cue from Mr. Advani, we have had names of Infosys founder Mr. Narayanamurthy, Tata Group chairman Mr. Ratan Tata, Ex BSP supremo Late Mr. Kanshiram, Mr Jyoti Basu being publicised in Media for the award.

Congress leaders came out in public and ridiculed all other political parties of making Bharat Ratna an agenda. For a change I agree with a political party. Bharat Ratna is chosen by Prime Minister of our country and no one else should tamper with a thing like that. Our media should grow up and move beyond pink journalism.

It’s really sad to be part of a democracy where awards are chased by a pack of mad dogs (read politicians). They should rather be talking about development and important issues that plague the country.

Its a friday night. Most people with friends are partying. Most people with families are having their dinner. Most people who are retired are tucked away in their beds. Everyone seems to be moving towards some greater purpose in life. Everyone seems to be achieving something in life.

Except me.

I am eating my umpteenth biscuit after unmpteenth cup of tea and umpteen glassfuls of water. And I am still trying to figure out what to do right now, tomorrow and eventually.

There are few options. I would list them in order of perference1. Leave everything behind and leave on a cross India journey.2. Stop thinking about the India journey (sounds romantic but it sucks to not have anyone waiting for you - such are humans).

And no points for guessing which one I chose. This blog hence becomes my story.

Tata launched their 1 lakh car yesterday. Called People’s car, its 623 cc, can seat 4 people, has more interior space than a Maruti 800 cc, meets emission norms, has been through the safety tests and above all is affordable to a common man.

Personally I think it’s a wow concept, car looks good, promised mileage is far better than any other car in any segment and cost of ownership is low and would go far in fulfilling dreams of millions of Indians.

The car would be available for purchase near Diwali (which traditionally is a period when people buy new houses, cars, electronics and jewelery in India). Tata's hope to sell around 500,000 of these during the first year. The dealer price is 100,000 and a customer would have to shell out about 1,24,000 including taxes and delivery costs.

Thinking again about Nano, there are quite a few positives and some negatives too.

Talking about negatives first, people say that it’s very cramped and it is like traveling in an auto-rickshaw with one more tyre and one more seat. My answer to these people is that the car has more inside space than Maruti 800. On comparison to auto-rickshaw, people hire the auto-rickshaw and people would own the car. They are ignoring the pride attached to owning a car.

Then there are people who say what if India added 500,000 cars on roads every year? What would happen to already bad traffic situation? I agree I don’t really have a convincing argument against it. In my opinions bulk of orders would come from small towns like Raipur, Patiala etc rather than Delhi and Mumbai. And these towns don’t really have road crunch. And then there is another argument that people would not buy Santros and Altos of the world and would buy Nano instead.

More negatives are attached with Singur and farmers that have been displaced. I don’t really have an opinion on the same. Can someone add perspectives?

Coming to positives, the very obvious is family transport solution for a common man. He says

[QUOTE] ... as urbanisation gathers pace, personal transport has become a big issue, especially since mass transport is often not available or is of poor quality. Two-wheelers - with the father driving, the elder child standing in front and the wife behind holding a baby - is very much the norm in this country. In that form two-wheelers are a relatively unsafe mode of transporting a family. The two-wheeler image is what got me thinking that we needed to create a safer form of transport. My first doodle was to rebuild cars around the scooter, so that those using them could be safer if it fell. Could there be a four-wheel vehicle made of scooter parts? ... [UNQUOTE]

Next there are more people who would take example from Mr. Tata and set about doing a task and achieving it.

Obviously there are talks about employment it generates, companies that are built around it, earning foreign exchange from exports, technological advancements (they have filed 34 patents) and many more.

Advertising is being handled by Rediffusion DY&R and agencyFAQs reports that Tatas plan to spend close to 30 crores in advertising the car when it is finally launched.

What remains to be seen is if the project is actually financially viable and if Tata can break even with the project.

Obviously Tatas has created an entire new market. Bajaj and Mahindra have already made public their plans of getting into the small car business. Things would only get interesting as we near the actual launch of the car.

Read more here, here and here. Please be advised that this is personal opinion and would be in probability coloured.

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1. Stay fit (I am unhealthy, need to control it)2. Acquire/create/partner a business3. Write a book - fiction/non-fiction will do4. Create an online presence (rather than an online identity). This would involve re-restructuring of blogs, conscious effort to post better quality content, creating the website, participating on socialandprofessional networking websites and finally meeting/creating/talking with other people online/offline.

The recent cricket test match between Australia and India would be in limelight for quite a few reasons.

Andrew Symonds has alleged that Harbhajan Singh abused him – racially. Then there were numerous places where umpiring went wrong. Very wrong. And for some strange reason India was at the receiving end in all these decisions. Field umpires can make mistakes, they are under stress from players and appeals and crowds but what about television umpire? Any mistakes that they make are unacceptable. In this particular test match, there have been at least 7 decisions that went against India.

To err is human and umpires are humans after all. There can’t really be a foolproof way to umpire cricket matches. On this Sunday morning, how about discussing how to improve the standards of umpiring?

Take a cue form Tennis. Players can contest one or two (don’t know the exact number) umpires’ decision (could be line calls, could be service calls etc) with the referee. Referee looks at the replay and has the power to overrule the umpire’s call. In cricket, allow captains to contest a fixed number of umpire decisions with the match referee. Match referee would have the power to over rule this decision.

ImplicationsMatch referee would become a sort of match godfather. For all practical purposes, he still is the godfather. This is yet another power being vested with him.

The game would be interrupted for few minutes when the match referee looks at the replays and decides on the decision. The delays are norm with the television replay decisions anyways. Waiting for a few minutes to improve the standard of the game is worth the wait.

Umpires might argue that their authorities would be diminished. They might get offended if a decision is overruled. ICC needs to decide which is larger and more important – umpires and their egos or the game.

Captains and players should be happy and can use this contesting power judicially. For example if Australian team doubts that Rahul Dravid has indeed nicked a ball to the wicketkeeper and umpire has ignored their appeal, and they think Rahul Dravid is a key player, they can contest.

Reliance Power is coming up with an IPO. To promote the initial public offer, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group has come up with a TVC.

Power On. India On.

It is not uncommon to see companies releasing advertisements just before their IPOs are to hit the capital markets. Notable ones are Future Group, Surya Agro (Priya Gold) etc. Although most IPO advertisements are more of product promotions rather than corporate profile, off late, things have been changing.

Coming back to Reliance Power, the ad has an awesome jingle. The ad has been shot really really well. There are quite a few shots that capture the true spirit of Indian-ness. Every Indian can connect to most of the visuals. The shot of two kids standing on a dark window and their reaction when the power comes on is simply amazing. Then there is a shot of car going under the lights. The visual shows awesome chemistry between lighting and motion.

Needless to say, every advert tries to achieve something specific. This advertisement aims at enticing retail investors to put their money into the issue. The Reliance Power IPO would surely be oversubscribed many times and this advertisement certainly would have a part to play.

This century is very important from a lot of perspectives. For starters, he got the team out of very difficult position. From 3 for 185, he along with Sourav Ganguly, Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma etc. helped the team take a vital first innings lead.

This century also helped India salvage some pride in the series. India got our for less than 200, in both innings in the last test match. Team needed a strong response in this match. And they delivered.

This century would also elevate spirits of the team. Arguably Sachin, Sourav, Dravid are the best three batsmen India has at this moment. If these three score, team would be upbeat. If these guys don't, other players are still not mature enough to stand and be counted.

For people who are superstitious, this century broke the jinx. He finally got a century after getting out seven times in nineties in 2007. It was not uncommon to see people speculating that he chokes in crunch situations. This should silence them and these critcs would take a second look at their opinion.

On personal front, he was visibly relieved to reach the milestone. He hasn't celebrated a century in this huge a fashion in recent past. In fact in the post match interview he said "I breathed a sigh of relief as I had missed eight or nine hundreds in 2007".

There are people who think that his illustrious past is behind him and he needs to retire. They need to read few facts, re-think and accept that the master blaster is still one of the best batsmen India has.

What remains to be seen is how India bowls in the second innings and if India can go on to win the match from here on.